Is a tween fantasy novel being released through Helping Hands Press, written by Mark Venturini.  I could try to express how excited I was to get a contact about doing some spot illustrations, but I'd probably fail to do so adequately.  Illustration, especially of fiction, has always been a big influence on my life goals, so the opportunity to do so was A+.

Mark was very clear from the outset that he wanted something in black-and-white as well as something that looked sketchy.  The spots would be at the chapter starts, and they needed to have an edge treatment to match other work he already had.  He's a great client- good communication back and forth, clear wants and direction, succinct suggestions about what would make him happy and open to interpretation and artistic leeway in seeing the job done to both parties satisfaction.

A couple sketches mocked up for the troll at the bridge.  The assignment was a ruined bridge in a meadow at night. The stony troll, wearing simple braes with optional tunic, should hold a magic staff.  In the sketches you can see that I put the bridges over water, which was incorrect.  Mark's troll bridges do not go over water, despite being paths to other places.  I was playing around with where to put the troll so that he would be visible to a reader.  The spots are fairly small, but which side the troll is on commands if he looks ominous or not.

Dark figure in an alley...   This one was pretty quick and simple, the key was making it look properly sketchy and populated while not distracting attention from the figure.  It was also an evening deal, so lighting was tricky.  Thanks to growing up with the Batman Animated Series, I did know that night scenes are lit from the bottom up.

The final on the troll and his bridge (not over water) !   The lights on the far hills are campfires, ostensibly from other trolls and bridges?  Rocks of the fallen bridge dot the meadow grasses.  

I had a mural commission for a full living room.  The inspiration piece I was shown was an early 1900s japanese-revival china hutch, black wood with gold inlay and tiny red depictions of people going about their days.  The hutch is in the dining room, and the client wanted the living room to be bold, a conversation piece, and tied to that furniture piece somehow.  Went with colours and themes - two of the directional kami being the blue dragon, Seiryuu, and the red phoenix, Suzaku, both over a parchment ground with blown gold flakes.  I did a few different kinds of dragons and phoenixes, since everyone has different taste on how body shapes and faces look.  I was especially excited to put the claw near the light switch like Seiryuu might play with the lights, as well as the lost and found scale coils coming all the way down the stairs.

Painting was about 2.5 weeks with only Windsor Guest and myself painting, mostly in drying time.  The parchment effect on the walls was achieved with pushed oil washes, then drawing the figures and painting them in acrylics, and finally a guarding matte clear coat over everything so that the client could still wash the walls and have a clean house.

  I really adore using copic markers.  I really enjoy taking personal commissions for people's characters and giving them new visualizations.  I also enjoy supporting charity - the Art Institute's Game Art and Design students formed up the 'GameArt GlobeTrotters' and participate in the Extra Life event.  Gamers select the children's hospital they want to play for during registration.  The Game Art GlobeTrotters last year and this year will be supporting Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.  Donation is/was tax-deductible and ALL PROCEEDS go to help kids. Last year, Extra Life raised more than 1.2 million dollars to save kids, and the AIP GlobeTrotters raised $1,289 dollars on our event day October 15, 2011  with a team of only 12 people.   

I was  the highest 'earner' on the team last year because I offered a waist up copic vignette for every $25 donated as a thankyou - it was super fun. I'd like to do more of the same this year if I have time.  We'll see.  

Each one usually takes about 2-3 hours from sketching, correcting, and then markering.  I just asked for description and/or a reference shot of the character's design and a common expression. 


These characters are owned by their respective commissioners.

Brian Hagan over at Moon Bunny Imports flagshipped an idea to make a ccg for the kids who attend Pittsburgh's local Anime convention.  I was very glad to have received an invitation from him to volunteer for this cute little project. 

It was  a mostly gratis shindig, paid for by Brian and arted up by a bunch of volunteers from AiP.  We could sign up for cards we wanted on a first come, first serve basis.

Technical and artistic requirements:
Dimensions: 2x3.5 inches, 150 dpi
Color Mode: CMYK
File Format: TIF
5mm black border
Images must be in color.
Give the item some kind of simple background, not just a solid color
or gradient.
Iinclude the top text and the bottom text,
as indicated in the spreadsheet.

He was looking for looking for cute/kawaii and humorous artwork, but there was no  unified style to match aside from that  preference.  I picked up 7 cards - 

 

I really liked working on the Gold Dragon, but that may relate to my long time love of the great lizards of myth.  Our turn around for these cards was literally 5 days, so the process had to be highly abbreviated.  The Gold was the only thing that got a dead tree initial sketch, and then it and everything else went into Flash for super fast use of the smoothing properties of drawing in Flash.  Exported the .pngs from the stage into Photoshop and then colored from there.